


if we're still burning my ashes

by chartreuser



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 18:21:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6669364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/chartreuser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kent remembers him, alright. The exact way that you'd remember a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if we're still burning my ashes

**Author's Note:**

> I have way too many people to thank for the creation of this. So if I've sent you this link! I'm thanking you from the deepest troughs of my heart. I know that dealing with me through my self-imposed writing break was not exactly the easiest thing to do. 
> 
> This fic is a companion piece to [ripe; unplucked](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6584950), and it's just as dark in nature, dealing with themes of suicide. I wouldn't consider this a sequel, not exactly, because this could be read as a standalone fic, but I've written this fic with that one in mind, so maybe check it out? 
> 
> ETA: i want to mention that this is one way the interpretation of the last fic could've gone. i honestly didn't write this intending to like, clear up what happened, and i never intend to do that. but in all the scenarios that could have led to jack wandering a wasteland inside his own mind, this just fascinated me the most, so. 
> 
> I really want to add a disclaimer that this isn't a very good fic in comparison to ripe, but I tried, man, I really did.

 

 

> the edge of the receding glacier  
>    
>  where painfully and with wonder  
>  at having survived even  
>  this far  
>    
>  we are learning to make fire
> 
> —Margaret Atwood, Habitation

 

At 00:00, on the fourth of July, Kent thinks, _fuck. The bathroom floor is really goddamned cold._

 

His phone is buzzing so loudly that it wakes him up. The vibrations are ugly against the tiles, which is why he finally convinces himself to stare hard enough at the notifications until they make some sort of sense. He receives nothing from anyone he’s interested in. The Aces’ group chat is flooded. That’s normal. A couple of other messages from old friends, no one that he still keeps in contact with. Kent ignores them. That’s also normal.

The lights are white, glaring. For a moment he thinks that he might retch—which, no big deal, the toilet bowl’s right there—but he doesn’t. It’s just the harshness of it; the way that it still shines even behind closed eyelids. It’s a miracle that he’s managed to fall asleep here, but Kent’s slept in worse places. Hard plastic chairs against this exact same lighting.

 

He picks himself up, unlocks the door. Walks outside to survey the damage. It’s actually not that bad, for the aftermath of a party. They even tried to clean up after themselves. Someone’s left a cigarette at the kitchen sink, and Kent pockets the lighter. He stares at the cigarette and waits for the flame to burn out. It takes one minute and nineteen seconds, according to his phone.

Kent picks the stub up and tosses it into the trash. It’s warm underneath his fingertips, but not by that much; it’s a hundred degrees out today, according to an app. He winces at the slight burn and shakes it off. Sends a text to his mother: _safe flight._

An anonymous number calls him, just after he presses _send_. Kent’s breathing picks up; it’s minute but still there. He waits for the hope to settle down before he swipes his thumb against the screen. “Hello?”

“Hey,” the caller says, and it’s Casey. His heart doesn’t drop but it’s a close enough deal. Kent thinks that it’s probably relief he’s feeling. He didn’t set himself up for this shit. Even waited.

He thinks: _don’t. There’s nothing to remember if you don’t let yourself._ Shuts his eyes. “Hey, Case. What’s up.”

“Happy _real_ birthday.”

Kent forces a laugh out. “Thanks. Any reason you’re calling?”

“Think I left my phone over at yours. You mind if I pick it up? We could, uh, grab some food or something. You free?”

Kent eyes the cigarette at the bottom of the trash can. “Uh, I don’t really know,” he says. It’s a lie. “I gotta go for now, though. I’ll, uh. I’ll text you, okay?”

 

He trudges back into the bathroom. Stands under the shower and turns it up as cold as they’d allow. The heat is overbearing even when he’s indoors, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Vegas. Of course. It’d be a different scenario if he were up north.

Kent leans against the wall. He listens to the slow patter of water falling onto the floor, onto his skin. It doesn’t help to quiet his mind. He blinks his eyes. Turns the shower hot, then hotter.

 

He ducks out of the shower naked; it’s fine, there’s no one around to see him. He fills a glass up with water before he distils the ice. The condensation hurts him, a little, when he wraps his hands around the glass. Waiting to wake up. It’s numbing him by the second.

Kent’s almost fully awake when his ringtone starts again, but it startles him nonetheless. The glass he was holding topples onto his hands. It’s an anonymous number. He sucks in a deep breath, grabs a paper towel to dry himself off, fingers slippery on the glass of his phone—but the ringing stops.

Anonymous number, so. Probably not Casey, not again. Kent runs a hand through his hair and tries to calm down. _Don’t. Don’t go there. Don’t think about it._

“FUCK,” he shouts, and smashes the glass he was holding onto the table. The shards bounce back on impact, leaving a fresh cut on his hand. It’s shallow, not too deep.

“Fuck,” Kent says again.

 

He gets back into the shower and washes off the blood. Normal temperature, this time, it’s not like he can’t fucking pay for the bills, he’s different now, older, got to calm down.

“Okay,” Kent says, and goes to disinfect the wound. He tries hard not to look at the mirror. It’s kind of pathetic but Kent’s never tried to deny who he was. On the ice there’s no escaping the insults, so he’s learned how to take them in, especially if they’re from Kent himself. You’ve got to learn this shit. You’ve got to learn how to internalise it before you let it get to you—

“Shit,” Kent says, aloud, squinting at his reflection. “I look like crap.”

It’s the lights, again, fluorescent. He turns them off, lets the sunlight flood in. It’s the quality of lights, Kent supposes, it’s artificial, you can adjust it, get your camera’s white balance off automatic, screw with the controls— _blood._ Right. He’s got to deal with it, wrap his hand up.

But it’s not like Kent’s a stranger to any of the aching. He skates recklessly, gets into fights. He’s not above playing dirty; doesn’t have that much of a reputation to uphold. It’s not even his first birthday that he’s injured himself. He remembers biting down on his tongue hard when he was seventeen. He used to do this all the time. Clean up his own blood. Wipe it off from other people’s hands. Stand back up and do the same shit again.

("Jack—" Kent had said, swallowing a mouthful of blood. At that point he’d realised that they haven't kissed, not for a few weeks. He used to hurt so much for Jack that Kent forgets that not all the pain he felt was his own. "Look at me. Look, here—I'm real. See?")

 

Kent exhales. Sometimes he forgets that things didn’t happen all that long ago. A decade and you’d still remember. There’s just some things you wouldn’t be able to wipe away from your mind. It’s a quieter sort of illness. Creeps onto you when you’re not looking. Holds you by the neck and dares you to shrug it off. Kent’s fine with it, really, he can handle this sort of a thing.

He presses his hands together. Feels the roughness of them bandaged, before raking them through his hair. Slides down against the bathroom door with his head in his grip and tries to breathe; he’s okay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There’s always a party in his dreams. Kent’s looking for a mop of curls, someone much taller than he is. Dark hair. Eyes so blue you’d plead to swim in them. They got lighter when they grew. In his dreams Kent barely remembers Jack at ten, awkward, unsure—but good at hockey. That’s the one thing about Jack, he thinks. That’ll just never change. But Jack’s harder to find in a room full of drunk hockey players. It’s not the matter of watching out for the one guy on the playing field. Elsewhere he’s just as invisible as the likes of you.

But Kent knows how to find him. He always does. Sometimes he’s not quick enough, but Jack’ll be pressed against the wall, smiling. A hand stretched out and Kent would say: “Jack. Hi.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

In reality it’s always different. It’s a hand tucked into his pants and, “Hey, Zimms,” and the wrong words said; it’s always that way with Zimms and Kenny. Someone’s always pulling too much. Something always snaps.

Even when Kent was younger then, with Jack moving further from his reach. For all of their performances on ice—nothing really added up perfectly with them. They thought it was picture perfect. Maybe Kent thought it was good, too. But it’s a different retelling of the same story. The media likes to say that they were just trying to make up for something that the other lacked, hammering it onto their heads until it stuck, but it wasn’t that, Kent thought.

Kent didn’t try to push Jack away from his anxiety. Jack didn’t try to push Kent away. It was a mutual acceptance, Kent and Jack and Jack’s anxiety. The third figure in the tale that no one bothered to remember. That wasn’t what they were trying to hide. All they wanted was to keep it together—but things have their consequences. You could spill your guts out into someone else’s hands and have them promise they’ll hold your heart, and they’ll keep it, alright. Keep it snug behind their teeth until even _that_ was too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kent unclenches his jaw. Blinks around the dizziness and knocks his head back. “We were never any fucking good for each other, were we?”

 

He grabs for the pills on the table. Takes one and lets it sit on the palm of his hand before he swallows it dry. His hands shake but at least it doesn’t drop. It tastes disgusting. Kent never understood the way that Jack managed to take so many. His hands shake whenever he pops one into his mouth; they’re so bitter that Kent gags, a little.

He feels his hands shaking. He wonders if Jack’s would, too. He probably has the answer, but it’s been a long time since he’s tried to dig in deep enough, whatever. It’s just sad when he thinks about it, that Jack probably has Bittle now, to press his hands onto the skin right above his heart. Match their breaths up so that no one’s choking. Answer the stuttering questions, patient as anything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~Before—~~

~~Jack asked, “what do you think will happen next? It’s so.” He struggled with words, then, the way he still does now. Kent tunes into his interviews. It’s still there underneath all the PR training.~~

~~Kent used to wait until Jack found the words. He was so goddamned understanding, thinking that he’d wait forever, with whatever that was left of his idealism at that point, trusting, trusting harder, hoping.~~

~~“—turbulent,” Jack had finished.~~

~~Kent never rolled his eyes, back then. He’d thought that he was so clever, that he’d learned all the lessons on Jack there was to have. He waited. Jack wasn’t shaking when he looked back up at him. “What if we were dead?”~~

~~Clever, until Kent said, “I don’t know.” Then, with a question of his own, as softly as he could manage: “Do you want to be?”~~

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kent waits for his body to cool down. It’s got nothing to do with the weather, however stifling it is. It feels like he’s been sweating for a decade. Ten whole years of waiting and winter would never run cold enough. He’s fallen hard on the ice. He’s had sex on it, fucked a teammate, gotten fucked, whatever. Kent could pretend as much as he wanted but the anger was always there; his blood had always run hot. It still does now.

 

He heads out. Kent tugs his snapback down over his eyes, breathes in the hot air. It feels like he’s melting his lungs with it. It feels like he’s always been burning.

The lighter sounds against his keys when he walks, pocket heavy. It’s annoying enough to be a disturbance but his hands sweat too much to hold anything in them. He ignores it. Moves forward.

He used to play a game, when he was bored of hockey and lacked for entertainment. Pick a direction and try your best to follow it. Walk until your legs stop functioning, or maybe until you reached the edge of town. He used to do this with Jack, giggling and holding hands when no one else saw. A pair of fucking idiots moving in the same direction until they were unfamiliar enough to be lost. Then you called a cab. Then you went back to your parents and pretended that you didn’t kiss another boy in an open space, pretending like no one recognised you.

 _That was the point of it_ , Kent thinks, stuck at a junction. _Not—actually forgetting. You were always supposed to head back home_.

 

He stops at a bridge. Stands in the middle of it, leaning over the railing. Kent takes his stolen lighter out and watches the tiny, exposed flame, flickering. The wind’s not that strong. He guesses that he’ll stay until it goes out. It’s his fucking birthday, whatever. This could be his damned candle for all he cares.

Someone approaches him from behind. “You need a cigarette?”

It’s an unfamiliar voice. The stranger’s—tall. Dark curls, well-built. Has a familiar accent but it’s nowhere that Kent can pinpoint. He waits for the stranger to move his gaze. He doesn’t, and Kent's scared of the blue he sees, the intensity of it. There’s a suggestion lurking at the back of his mind but Kent doesn’t know if he wants to humour that. It’s almost too much. But _almost_ is an ugly word. Kent tells it to himself all too often.

“Nah, I don’t smoke.” Kent says, finally, and drags his eyes elsewhere. He lets go of the railing and walks away. Flags a cab.

 

Kent still feels overheated when he’s been cooling off in the cab for a few good minutes. He presses a hand over his own heart. Waits for the anxiety to die down.

 

He’s standing in his backyard, tipping his pills over into the fire pit when his phone rings again, that same ghastly song. Kent tosses the stolen lighter into the fire, too, just for the sake of it. He fumbles for his phone and wonders if it’s going to be anonymous again, but it isn’t.

“Bad Bob Zimmermann,” it reads.

 

The only thing going through Kent’s mind is: _Again?_

It’s hard to remember that the pale, unconscious body in front of him is Jack Zimmermann, Hockey Player, but Kent thinks that he’s always seen Jack this way—too-distant; closed off far away from the world. Even if he never saw Jack in a hospital before, plugged up to the nines; it’s just that some images are too hard to erase—especially if it’s one you’ve never seen before. At least now Kent could say that he was there in the aftermath.

 

"Dead, dying, _Jack_ —" The cold air blasts above him. Kent's alone in the room; he hears someone breathing steadily. He's really fucking afraid that it's just him. "You're always dying. Why are you always dying?"

 

His mother comes for him. It’s the first birthday that he’s ever cried in front of her. Kent used to only cry in front of Jack, before. He wonders if he’ll ever bring himself to cry in front of Jack again.

“Yesterday,” Kent says, listening to every one of her inhales, exhales, “I tried to call him. Maybe it was today.” His breath catches.

The light is just as bright as the last time he kneeled in the hallway, blood running cold. The colour of his mother’s eyes shift whenever he tries to look for himself, but it never turns into that one shade of blue, and Kent’s thankful for it. He tries again. “I think he called me today. I didn’t pick up.”

“Kenny,” she says, cupping a hand to his face. He remembers all the times he did that to Jack. He wonders if his hands were as cooling as his mother’s. He hopes so. “It’s not your fault.”

 

He hugs her the way he did when he was younger, more impressionable. It was the exact same. Sometimes you come back to the same thing. The same people. A recurring nightmare, a _didja miss me,_ and a _leave, parse._

“I really hope it isn’t,” he says.

 

Kent looks for the Zimmermanns when he can bring himself to let go.

It’s always hard, talking to them. Kent always feels like he owes them an apology he’ll never be able to express—and they’re so accepting that Kent thinks he cheated them, somehow, robbed them of their son and fucked him up so much that he had to have these pills just to stay sane. Kent’s scared of them, but they were never hostile. Sometimes Bad Bob slips up and uses the term ‘son’, and it’s strange; Kent never had a father around to forgive him for ~~who~~ what he did wrong.

“Could you tell me if—when he wakes up?” Kent asks, when he’s gotten Alicia’s attention. Her hand is clasping tightly onto Jack’s, whose hand looks cold and clammy and exactly how Kent feels. He thinks he might be going numb. Feels like he’s holding too much ice in his hands.

“Yeah,” Alicia tells him, and her voice is hoarse, like she’s been crying for too long. Kent understands and doesn’t, all at the same time.

Kent bites his tongue, but he blurts the words out anyway: “I have to—I don’t really care if he doesn’t want to see me. I’ve got to. I’ve got to talk to him, y’know? A few years of not talking and he pulls _this,_ and I think he called me, I’m almost sure, it’s him, it’s probably him. I called him so many times and he never picks up. I don’t. _Why_?”

Bad Bob presses a hand to his shoulder, clearly about to say something, but Kent can’t quite fucking do it right now, not with Jack laying in front of him, immobile. He feels like he can’t breathe. He feels like _Jack_ won’t breathe.

Kent excuses himself out of the room.

 

The sunlight bleeds out of the sky when he walks back into the hallway. Kent walks in the opposite direction of his mother, sticks to that. He goes through with it all the way to the elevator, then changes his mind when he’s inside it. The light’s got a different quality now, Jack would say, but it hurts all the same through the glass. Kent wonders how difficult it would be to break it.

 

The roof is empty when he manages to reach it. The wind’s picked up speed; though the weather’s still humid as ever. Kent sits against the doors and turns off his phone. He watches the night sky break out. You can never see the stars in Vegas—but it’s his birthday. The fireworks erupt over his head and Kent cranes his neck to watch them, bursting red-orange and yellow. They’re loud, but it’s better than the quiet. No one’s looking at him now but he bets there’re security cameras up here; Kent doesn’t really care. He shuts his eyes. Breathes in deep. It’s okay if they notice.

Fourth of July’s always been festive, lasting the entire night, so Kent can’t hear himself when he finally cries.

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote this I was thinking of how, you know, Jack really isn't in a good place when he was younger with Kent, we all know that. But what if it messed with Kent just as much? If he's never gotten help for this, how would he turn out? Judging from the interactions of Kenny and Zimms from the comic, I really don't think either of them have worked their issues, and you know, this can only fester into a wound. Relationships rot when you don't put in work. If it's an unhealthy one, well. 
> 
> I never really felt for Kent much in the beginning, honestly, I was all, yeah yeah, he's alright, I don't hate him, but imagine that much pressure and none of the safety of being Bad Bob's son resting on your shoulders when you were young... It's not easy? I've written Kent a bit darker because I felt that it was appropriate to the limbo fic I've written from Jack's pov. I'm in no way saying that this was exactly what happened. I don't think that Jack actually did that big of a number on Kent, but well. You have your interpretation, I've got mine. 
> 
> If you're noticing changes in the writing style, then well, I tried to alter it to suit Kent's personality more, the way that he suppresses his own feelings. I doubt his mind would be very lyrical either, haha.
> 
> time spent: around six hours?  
> /this is unbeta'd, by the way, i'm gonna work on it after a day or two to settle in!
> 
> also, i've got a [omgcp tumblr](http://holsterr.tumblr.com) if you'd like to follow me there!


End file.
